The New Brunswick PSE Crisis

The New Brunswick PSE Crisis

Early in 2007, Premier Graham appointed Commissioners Rick Miner and Jacques L’Écuyer to study post-secondary education in New Brunswick. In response to the commission’s call for appearances and briefs, many UNB entities met the commission and offered extensive written submissions. Among them was the AUNBT Submission to the Commission on Post-Secondary Education.

On 14 September the commissioners issued their report, Advantage New Brunswick. It proposed that the existing “hierarchy of differences” in New Brunswick post-secondary education be transformed into a system that would facilitate the training of workers for jobs in industry and business. To accomplish this it recommended, in part, that several community colleges and university campuses be restructured into three hybrid “polytechnics”. Among the university campuses to be restructured was UNB Saint John.

New Brunswickers responded with the largest demonstrations in favour of access to liberal education that Canada has ever witnessed. Through the Fall of 2007 thousands of students, university workers and citizens took to the streets. In Edmundston there was a march on the Liberal Party’s annual meeting. In Fredericton there was a march on the Legislature. The epicentre of public mobilization was Saint John, where the campus roused the community into demonstrations, letter-writing and many forms of education. In this campaign AUNBT members were involved extensively. For an archive of demonstration photographs and videos see Living in Interesting Times.

Here are just a few of the dozens of critiques that Advantage New Brunswick provoked:

Late in the Fall of 2007 the government sought to defuse anger by handing the report for reconsideration to a taskforce of the four university presidents and three community college principals, working in secret and under close watch by a deputy minister. The recommendations of these presidents and principals, released on 26 June 2008, focussed on the perceived training needs of industry filtered through the rhetoric of the “self-sufficiency” agenda. To mollify the presidents of UNB and Université de Moncton, the group jettisoned the notion of turning the Saint John, Edmundston and Shippagan campuses into polytechnics.

In return for the dream of half a billion dollars of new public funding, the university presidents surrendered the principle of university autonomy. Academic programs and planning would now be subject to the whims of the bureaucrats and politicians of the day.

On the same day that the presidents’ and principals’ report was made public, the province issued its Action Plan to Transform Post-Secondary Education in New Brunswick. The Action Plan accepted the surrender of autonomy while promising the universities and colleges less than one-fifth of the funding sought. Like the presidents’ and principals’ report, the Action Plan was prepared entirely in secret. Two weeks later the responsible minister announced that “debate” over post-secondary policy in New Brunswick was now over. It was time for action.

The Action Plan’s alarming attack on university autonomy began a new round of dissent over post-secondary education in New Brunswick. Now it was not three campuses that were at issue, but our very character as universities. AUNBT responded with sharp critiques:

Since the province released its Action Plan, its only discernible “action” (as of this writing, in 2009) has been to retire the deputy minister who was the Action Plan’s principal author. She was “seconded” to UNB.